On Saturday, June 29, the Utah AFL-CIO will be hosting Utah Unions and You, a great event bringing together local labor and community members to explain to the general public what unions are, how they affect all working people and how to become part of the union movement. Union members will be grilling up free food and sharing information about union apprenticeship programs and community service.

More than 800 union members, their families, immigration advocates and community leaders rallied in front of the Arizona state Capitol yesterday to reaffirm their support for commonsense immigration reform that protects immigrants and America's workers. In a press conference before the rally, Arizona AFL-CIO Executive Director Rebekah Friend announced that the organization had adopted a resolution that calls on Congress to pass immigration reform, including a practical and inclusive road map to citizenship that reflects core American values such as fairness, equality and family unity.

After the Sunday afternoon service at Grace Temple Baptist Church in Tucson, Ariz., a crowd of more than 30 churchgoers filed into the adjacent hall for a voter education forum presented by the A. Philip Randolph Institute’s (APRI's) Southern Arizona chapter. The crowd was a mix of young voters and those who’d been voting since before the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. It was a chance for everyone to learn the ins and outs of various ballot initiatives, as well as how and where they could vote early.

Last week, while Clint Eastwood argued with a chair and Mitt Romney officially became his party’s presidential nominee, working families in the West made sure that the spectacle of the Republican National Convention didn’t drown out their own voices and concerns.

The Writers Guild of America, East and the Wounded Warrior Project have joined forces in a project that pairs military veterans and their family members with award-winning writers, empowering them with storytelling skills to share their post-war experiences.

Read the full story here, part of the AFL-CIO In Our Communities feature highlights.

Imagine our surprise last week when Fox Business correspondent John Stossel made an unexpected visit to the AFL-CIO building. Stossel’s previous coverage of the labor movement include a special on public education that blames teachers’ unions for the failings of public schools, an interview with TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen, in which Stossel claims unions impede job growth and several entries on his FoxBusiness.com blog where he argues against the minimum wage and against regulations on unpaid internships.

As college tuition steadily increases by an average of about 8 percent each year, more and more students and their families rely on student loans to help pay the escalating costs of obtaining a college degree. One in three college students takes out federal subsidized Stafford Loans when scholarships, grants and part-time jobs just aren’t enough to fund higher education.

Interest rates on subsidized Stafford Loans are set to double on July 1, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, unless Congress acts. Today, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic push to keep the rates at their current level—but the young people whose families and futures will be directly impacted by a rate hike are making sure their voices are heard on this critical issue.

Last Saturday, more than 30 dedicated Asian Pacific American (APA) activists from a variety of local APA organizations joined the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance’s D.C. Chapter (APALA-DC) in Annandale, Va., to launch the national APALA “Every Vote Counts” campaign. Members of APALA-DC, Asian American Action Group, Korean Americans for Obama, KAYA (formerly Filipino Americans for Obama), Vietnamese Americans for Obama, Voice of Vietnamese Americans and others arrived at the Northern Virginia Central Labor Council bright and early to learn about the importance of civic engagement within the APA community and to train in the basics of voter registration.

Tens of thousands of community members, working families, retirees, veterans, students and other supporters of workers’ rights stood together on a beautiful, sunny Saturday in Madison to reclaim Wisconsin. After enduring a year of Gov. Scott Walker’s disastrous agenda—tax cuts for corporations and the richest 1 percent, at the expense of public services and the dismantling of collective bargaining rights—Wisconsinites are more united than ever in their fight to recall the governor and repair all the damage his policies have done to the state.